"A Committee of Correspondence"

06 December 2019

Several Things - December 6 2019

Joe Biden I keep saying that Joe Biden is IMO a nasty bully masquerading as a benevolent, highly experienced and wise curmudgeon with deep roots in the Labor Unions. He is none of those things. In evidence of that he yesterday advanced menacingly toward a man who had the audacity to challenge the "Joe Biden" show and narrative. This was in Iowa. The man told him he (Biden) was too old to be president (He is). The man questioned the probity of Joe's narcotics addled son''s appointment to the board of directors of a corrupt enterprise in Ukraine. Joe was visibly enraged and it seemed for a minute that he would attack this citizen. Really, Democrats? Really? Him? Bloomberg? Hilly? Booker? Castro? Warren?

Jobs. The Labor Department employment report released today states that the US economy added 266,000 new jobs in November rather then the expected 186,000. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 %. This is full employment because there is a certain amount of structural unemployment inherent in any economy. "Impeachment?" What's that?

St. Nancy the hypocrite a reporter asked Pelosi yesterday if she acts from hatred of Trump. She responded that having been raised as a Catholic she does not hate anyone because we are taught to hate the sin and love the sinner. Well, pilgrims, Catholics are expected to practice their religion through both faith and deeds and to accept the teaching of the Church. In spite of the hopes of some, this is not a cafeteria operation. One does not pick and choose among the Church's teachings. If you can't accept them, you leave. Pelosi is in spiritual rebellion against the Church's teaching on abortion. Catholic teaching is that abortion is murder plain and simple. There are some Catholic politicians who claim to compartment their personal beliefs and actions from their responsibility to their non-Catholic constituents. I do not challenge that having done much the same as a government servant but that is not the case with St. Nancy who is an ardent advocate for abortion. BTW if the US government had sought to require me to do something immoral I would have refused and taken the consequences.

Riots in Paris I like France, the French language, their wine, their cheese, their women and their style of life, but I am not blind to the faults of the French. One of these is a tendency to take to the streets over grievances or perceived grievances in society. France has a highly regulated economy that does not particularly favor growth of the kind now being experienced in the US. "Bureaucracy" as a word is French in origin. At the same time the welfare state is massive and all pervasive. In fact the welfare state with its early retirements and cradle to grave benefits is just too big to be sustained by the economy of the country. This conflict of means and ends is strangling the country's ability to function. Macron knows this and has been trying over the last year or so to "whittle down" the outputs enough to have them align with the inputs in the economy. The result has been the "Yellow Sweaters" street riots and now a new wave of riots resisting attempts to change retirement laws. This street activity will burn itself out but the riots are likely to be prolonged.

The Shooting In Pensacola A Saudi military trainee went shahiid (berserk)today and killed three people. The naval aviation center there routinely trains foreign aviators. There was nothing unusual in the man's presence on base. He had been in training for a year. King Salman sent his condolences supposedly saying to Trump that he and the Saudi people love the US and the American people. Well, pilgrims, I lived in The Kingdom for several years and have visited many times and I do not remember indications of their love for us. It will be interesting to learn if the student just ran amok crying Allahu Akbar! or couldn't make it in class or both. pl

What happens in France are not "riots" (not yet), but protests with a few incidents mainly due to the police forces new doctrine (coming from Israel): hurt and frighten peaceful protesters so they do not come back.

Those protests are due to the fact that more and more french people are poor (90% of french had to share 18% of produced richness in 2017), but also to the fact that more and more french people understand that the political class is sold to corporate greed and doesn't care about France.
Pechiney, Alstom, Latecoere, Alcatel, Technip etc were successful french industrial corporations that were sold to US interests without any economical merits (sometimes in a Mafia like blackmail as was the case for Alstom).
After having destroyed the industrial companies, the Corporations want the state to privatize health protection, pensions schemes etc so that the banksters and others can make money out of it, just like in the desastrous american system. To give numbers, the 2018 private part of the health protection system represents now about 13-14% (in value) of the total health services performed. Still, for those 14% of services, those private companies have management fees that are now superior to all the management fees perceived by the public system which provide 85% of the health services... A complete robbery. The financial situation of the french social protection system (including pensions) is good, but the french politicians keep reducing the level of mandatory social contributions so that they can pretend the system is going bankrupt. At the same time, they keep very high taxes level for small businesses and a lot of taxes rebates for the big corporations.

Macron is a bankster, a traitor sold to international corporations, as are many french politicians: the french working class is resisting to international corporate greed, and rightly so.

Where are you getting your facts, Babak. We spend the largest part of Medicare funding on the last 6 months of life. If anything, we do need to let more people die with dignity and not subject them to cash-extraction over-treatment during their final days. Seriously, where are you getting your cartoon anecdotal version of the US? An exception does not make a rule.

Babak,
No one is dying for lack of available medical care in the US. That is Michael Moore/socialist propaganda. The mentally ill are a different story, but they are a challenging cohort to deal with.

I don't understand why anyone in this day and age needs an abortion. Birth control is readily available at Planned Parenthood and other organizations on sliding cost schedules. The "morning after pill" is readily available without prescription at most pharmacies in case in the heat of passion a potential mistake occurred.

Who is it that has unprotected sex, gets pregnant and then three or four (or more)months later decides to abort? That makes no sense to me. I asked SWMBO about it and, as a woman, she doesn't get it either.

That large funds are spent in the last 6 months of life is not in dispute. But is does not detract from my point, which is you rail against abortion yet deny medical care to the working poor as a matter of course. A 37-year old ditch digger with a cardiovascular medical condition is condemned to an early death since he cannot afford the medicine that could prolong his life: acttual case.

Perhaps the United States, being a country of immigrants- both legal and illegal - cannot afford anything like UK's NHS. But how is that UK or Spain or Sweden can deal with the costs of end-of-life care? They are poorer countries compared to US.

Colonel - there is a great difference of opinion in the UK about the significance of the "European Army" and the UK's place in it. Some reckon it's not meant to be an ultimate replacement for NATO. Some think that the UK moves to integration with EU defence forces outside NATO are the thin end of the wedge.

According to recent reports the German armed forces are reckoned to need ten to twenty years to get up to scratch. UK armed forces are too small and getting smaller but are still reckoned to be Tier 1. "Tier 1" seems to refer to the ability to send troops abroad. The French armed forces are substantial but tend to be focused more on the ME and Africa.

From the little I know of military affairs it seems to me that talk of a "European Army" is pie in the the sky. That's if it's intended for anything serious. Tony Blair, of all people, is on record as stating recently that without the Americans Europe has no effective defence. That is a generally held view.

But things can change and I believe it is intended that they should change. This is a seldom discussed subject, compared with other subjects that are getting discussed rather more in the UK at the moment, but the impression I get is that joint defence projects will be the glue that holds this embryonic European army together. That was confirmed a while ago by one of Mrs Mogherini's officials who remarked that joint procurement was the starting point for integrated defence.

Small countries need alliances if they are to have an effective defence. It is my view that the UK should not select its alliances on the basis of who can offer the best joint procurement opportunities.

Might I ask, what is the American view on the value of European NATO and the possibility of it morphing into a separate European Army?

The mistake was engaging in procreative act and pretending one did not understand the full consequences in the first place. Procreation is sacred. Treat it with all due respect; not lousy excuses after the fact or infantcide "by mistake". C'mon. What are you really trying to say when you say a pregnancy is a "mistake". You might need some basic anatomy and physiology course review.

Babek, conservatives as myself do value life and consequently do not support abortion by choice, which is an intentional taking of a human life and

I also do not feel "health care" (what ever that is) is a state funded human right supported by mandatory tax dollars. Health care is basically a commodity that is bought and sold, while emergency/trauma care is currently a social welfare service.

I suspect your problem is you cannot define "health care" but demand we write a blank check and somehow make it free for everyone for everything. This is a vastly different proposition than what is called "socilallized" medicine. No one hands out unlimited, undefined "health care". I think you are throwing unfounded conclusions around for some other agenda. Do you want to explain this?